Extractivism in the Anthropocene

John Bellamy Foster

Over the last decade and a half, the concept of extractivism has emerged as a key element in our understanding of the planetary ecological crisis. Although the development of extractive industries on a global scale has been integral to the capitalist mode of production since its onset, commencing with the colonial expansion of the long sixteenth century, this took on a much larger worldwide significance with the advent of the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marking the beginning of the age of fossil capital. Nevertheless, it was only with the Great Acceleration, beginning in the mid-twentieth century and extending to the present, that the quantitative expansion of global production and of resource extraction in particular led to a qualitative transformation in the human relation to the Earth System as a whole. This has given rise to the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history, in which anthropogenic (as opposed to non-anthropogenic) factors for the first time in Earth history constitute the major determinants of Earth System change.1 In the Anthropocene, extractivism has become a core symptom of the planetary disease of late capitalism/imperialism, threatening humanity and the inhabitants of the earth in general.

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